


Endgame

by cyphernaut



Series: Culture Shock [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Discipline, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26996914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyphernaut/pseuds/cyphernaut
Summary: Daniel is a brat.   He may or may not have a reason.
Relationships: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill
Series: Culture Shock [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774372
Comments: 22
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [Fessst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fessst) for the support, feedback, and occasional whip-cracking to get this story complete.

Daniel told himself he wasn’t moping. He stared at the statuette in front of him and tried to let it distract him from the last five or six conversations he’d had with Jack. Jack, who had suddenly become a stickler for procedures and regulations that Daniel couldn’t remember him even giving a damn about before. He let out a sharp breath, then ground his teeth when he felt Jack’s presence in his office doorway.

“Hey, you wanna get a bite to eat?” Jack asked, and Daniel’s stomach twisted, unready to accept the peace offering. He tried to focus on his work, and was mildly successful until Jack waved his hand right between Daniel’s face and the artifact he’d been studying. “Earth to Daniel.”

“Careful, Jack, this is fragile.” It wasn’t actually fragile, but it could have been, and Daniel was careful with all of his artifacts.

Jack didn’t mind, of course. He treated the fragility of ancient artifacts with the same cavalier disregard he did anything that didn’t directly affect him. Except, of course, his newfound respect for regulations and procedure when scheduling off-world travel. “You wanna get a bite to eat?”

“No.”

“Come on, Danny, you have to eat.”

“Did you talk to General Hammond again?”

“Daniel…” Jack started, and Daniel had his answer. Jack wasn’t even trying to do anything.

“This is important!”

“I know, Daniel, but right now we’ve got months and months of interplanetary politics to catch up on, and dozens of allies who are kind of curious why we’ve gone radio silent.”

The time loop had thrown everything out of whack, and Daniel’s personal visits had been deemed ‘nonessential travel’ while they sorted out exactly what they had missed. Even dialing out for radio communication was apparently too much of a burden on the gate schedule. “I need to go back.”

“And you can, just not right now. We can’t change the whole mission schedule last minute.” Daniel seethed at the obvious lie. They changed schedules at the last minute all the time. They just didn’t want to do it for Daniel. Fed up with Jack and SGC, and the military in general, Daniel began to pack away his work for the day. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Because I’m not letting you go to Abydos on Sunday?”

Daniel smiled coldly into his bag as he checked that he had everything. “No, because I want to go home.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll just stay here and work on these translations.” Jack settled into a chair and picked up a stray paper, softening the sarcasm with a conspiratorial smile, as if Daniel were in on the joke, and Daniel just picked up his things and walked toward the door.

“Do what you want. You always do.”

“Excuse me?” Jack shot up from his chair. “Daniel, get back here.”

“You’re not my CO when I’m off the clock,” Daniel said, walking out the door in complete disregard of Jack’s rising temper behind him.

“When you’re lobbying to go off world, you bet your ass I’m your CO! Now, march yourself right back here, and tell me what’s going on.” 

“Bye, Jack.”

* * *

Daniel wasn’t sure what to expect from Jack at the briefing the next morning. Had he answered his phone or listened to the two messages Jack had left for him, he’d probably had gotten a clue, but he hadn’t been in the mood to deal with it.

From the surreptitious glances he was getting, Jack wasn’t sure what to expect from him either. Daniel kept his eyes on the papers in front of him, pretending to read the reports again, and only chiming into the meeting when necessary, careful to avoid catching Jack’s eye any time he needed to look up.

As the meeting was wrapping up, Daniel took the opportunity to plead his case with the general. He got half a sentence into it when he was cut off.

“Colonel O’Neill has already informed me about your request, and it’s been denied,” Hammond informed him, with a finality that Daniel was not ready to accept.

“I know, sir, but if you’d let me-”

Jack ran a hand over his face. “Daniel! We are not having this conversation again.”

“If you’d let me-”

“Daniel!” Jack snapped, and his palm fell down on the table with a loud crack. “Zip it!”

The room froze, the sound of Daniel’s pulse absurdly loud in his ears. He didn’t bother to wait to see what would happen. He grabbed the mission briefing and stormed back to his lab, military protocol at being ‘dismissed’ be damned.

* * *

They stepped out of the stargate into a vast darkness that the malp recordings barely hinted at. Nostalgia struck him, and he froze until it passed. The room felt familiar, not in structure, but in the timbre of its silence. He wondered at the character of a people who would expend so much effort to construct emptiness.

Jack’s voice broke the formidable stillness of the chamber.

“All right, kids, stay close. Don’t break anything, don’t touch anything, and remember, you’re not just representing yourselves, you’re representing the stargate program, all of humanity, and the entire second grade class.” At Teal’c’s raised eyebrow, he added, “Or, you know, Jaffa-ity.”

The casual condescension, which Daniel usually wrote off as one of Jack’s idiosyncrasies, grated on him, and he avoided the meaningful glance that he often shared with Sam at the antics.

The chamber reminded him of the cartouche where he’d spent so much of his time in Abydos. It had been a sanctuary of sorts, and while no one had understood Daniel’s need to be alone, they’d allowed him the indulgence. It had been balanced with nights crammed with others around a fire, or fussed over by gaggles of women whose aims he often couldn’t quite identify. In the cartouche, he’d only belonged to himself, and he’d thought that’s what he wanted, but maybe it had just been the balance.

Jack was keeping up a string of irreverent commentary and advancing through the chamber with the breezy assurance that everyone else would be right behind.

Daniel was not right behind.

He slipped into an alcove that turned out to be a corridor. It was lined with inscriptions, similar to the dazhuan script. The ossified history of a people brought from their world to another. Unsurprising, but a novel take on the same story they’d heard so many times. He traced out the carvings with his fingers, cold, smooth, and permanent.

Jack’s voice erupted from the radio, shattering the reverie. “Daniel, do you copy?”

Impelled by habit, Daniel’s hand was halfway to the radio before his mind could question the action. Did he _want_ to answer? The question led to another, more disconcerting one: Was he hiding? Hiding was about intentionality. He wondered how much of an accident his current location was.

“Daniel, respond!” Jack sounded anxious, as if he suddenly didn’t want Daniel to ‘zip it’ anymore.

At that thought, Daniel realized that he was, in fact, hiding. He switched the channel on his radio.

* * *

It didn’t take too long for someone to find him, but then he hadn’t gone far. He had enough time to puzzle out a good portion of one of the walls, and he’d taken pictures of all of it. 

Luckily for him, Teal’c hadn’t bothered to ask how he’d ended up so far off course, or why he hadn’t answered, just ensured that neither of them were in immediate danger before grabbing his radio.

“I have located Daniel Jackson. He is unharmed.”

“ _Okay, meet us back here._ ”

“We should return to the stargate,” Teal’c explained, as if Daniel hadn’t just heard the order come through the radio himself.

Daniel scratched the side of his face, considering his options. He wondered how much of what he’d done could be explained away. Jack had walked off first. His radio was currently on the wrong channel. “Yeah, I’m going to stay here a little longer.”

“Colonel O’Neill has asked us all to meet at the stargate.”

“Yeah, I’m going to stay here a little longer.”

The tone and repetition skated easily across cultural boundaries, and Teal tilted his head in concern. “This course of action is not wise, Daniel Jackson.”

Under the pressure of Teal’c’s placid disapproval, Daniel almost faltered, but he gathered his resolve and instead began to annotate his sketches. Teal’c barely lifted an eyebrow before going back to the radio.

“Daniel Jackson is refusing to return to the stargate. He appears to be incapacitated in some way.”

“ _Get him back here, Teal’c._ ”

“I do not believe that he will come willingly.”

“ _Drag him. Shoot him. I don’t care. Get him back here._ ”

His pen skipped slightly at ‘shoot him’, but Daniel otherwise feigned disinterest in the conversation. If Teal’c cared either way, he didn’t let on.

“We must return to the stargate now. If you do not come willingly, I will use force.”

When Daniel still didn’t respond, Teal’c reached for him, and Daniel jumped back, colliding softly with the stone behind him. Anger flared up at Jack for outsourcing his dirty work to a proxy, and Daniel slapped his journal closed. “I’m coming.”

Teal’c obviously didn’t trust him, staying a bit too close and keeping a curious eye trained on Daniel the entire time. Daniel couldn’t blame him. He hardly trusted himself. Before long, they reached the gate, where Jack and Sam waited. Daniel resisted Jack’s expectant bent and waited for the interrogation and associated rant.

“Well?” Jack asked, and Daniel affected confusion. Jack gave him a few seconds, then prompted, “What happened, Daniel?”

“Nothing. I was translating the inscriptions on the walls. Apparently the culture-”

“I don’t care what the walls said. Why did you wander off?!”

Jack was livid, which Daniel found soothingly familiar and perversely satisfying. Sam quickly found something else to do, not nearly as comfortable with Jack’s sarcastic attempts at dressing Daniel down. Teal’c on the other hand, was making no effort to hide his curiosity, apparently still under the impression that Daniel might be ‘incapacitated’ by whatever mysterious force compelled people to take notes on ancient inscriptions. Daniel didn’t mind an audience, not when he casually rebuffed Jack’s reprimand.

“I went to go translate the inscriptions.”

“Right after I said to stay close?”

Sam called Teal’c over, a ruse to give Daniel some privacy, he could only assume. It gave Daniel something to track rather than Jack’s question, a way for his answer to come out distracted and distant, a pet peeve of Jack’s in situations like this. “Sorry, I thought you were joking around.”

The delivery was perfect, a reference to Hammond’s own criticism of Jack’s cavalier attitude toward command, but Jack saw right through the excuse. It wasn’t quite too far though, and Daniel could still live on the border of two realities, one in which he had gotten lost in his work, wandered off and overlooked mission protocol in his curiosity, and the other in which he flagrantly thumbed his nose at Jack’s command.

“Okay, and when I called you on the radio, was that a ‘joke’, too?”

Daniel considered saying that he didn’t hear it. He was teetering on the edge of blatant rebellion, but he could still walk back. But as the silence stretched on, he began to come to terms with the fact that he might be just as angry as Jack looked, that he might want to rub his defiance in Jack’s face. With a soft breath, he let out a subtle, “I was zipping it.”

The audacity did not go unnoticed. In fact it was noticed, and noticed, and noticed, as Jack’s face wrung out a range of ominous emotions, before finally settling on seething fulmination aimed right at Daniel.

“Right.” His grim expression didn’t stray from its target, even as he waved to get Teal’c and Sam’s attention. “Carter, dial us out.”

Sam started on the DHD, but Teal’c approached the two of them with a furrowed brow.

“O’Neill, I believe that Daniel Jackson may have been compromised. His behavior has been abnormal, and in the time that he was unaccounted for, he may have come under alien influence.”

Jack grabbed Daniel by the arm, and Daniel knew better than to try to shake it off. “Don’t worry, Teal’c. I’m not going to take my eyes off him until his behavior returns to normal Daniel Jackson levels of abnormal.”

* * *

Strangely, Jack let him go after the medical checks. There was nothing wrong with him, of course, other than the sword of Damocles hanging above him. Daniel returned to his lab, feeling strangely adrift without the spectre of Jack’s imminent retaliation. He had expected Jack to be angry, some salty mix of censure and sarcasm, but instead he’d been met with stony professionalism. It was unnerving. 

Forcing himself to concentrate on the array of photographs he’d dug out of a neglected bin, he ignored the wave of anxiety every time footsteps approached the lab, along with the ambiguous undertow of disappointed relief when Jack didn’t appear to bring whatever reckoning Daniel had brought on. He tried not to reflect on what his feelings implied. Doubly tried not to reflect on the implications of his actions earlier in the day.

Just when he stopped marking the passage of every airman in the corridor, Jack stepped into the lab. Daniel actively failed to notice him, and Jack waited, uncharacteristically silent. 

The tension grew until Daniel was compelled to acknowledge Jack’s presence, and Jack held out his hands in question. “So, what’s your endgame?”

“I’m busy,” Daniel said, rifling through the pictures that were barely holding his attention. He didn’t want to play Jack’s games, and he didn’t want to suffer through a forced introspection. In fact, he didn’t want to do anything that aligned with Jack’s objectives at the moment.

“You’re about to get a lot of time freed up, if you don’t give me some answers.”

Daniel chose two of the photos to lay out on the desk, a welcome reprieve from Jack’s thinly-veiled threats. The symbols were similar to those he’d seen in the chamber, with several shared divergences from Earth-based characters. “Do you have any specific questions, ones that aren’t vague clichés?”

“Yes, _specifically_ , what did you hope to get out of running off today and ignoring me on the radio?”

“I already told you. I was reading the inscriptions in the other chamber.” Within the confines of his own mind, Daniel ran off again, evading Jack’s demands in order to review the sketches he’d made of the walls in light of the photos in front of him. Both sets of characters were strangely squared, unexpected in such ancient samples. He wondered whether they could have diverged sometime before the Zhou Dynasty, and pointed his mind to that puzzle rather than the grim set of Jack’s jaw.

“And sabotaging your radio.”

Daniel didn’t deny it, and he didn’t nitpick Jack’s definition of ‘sabotage’. Jack could think what he wanted. He laid another photo on top of the two he’d chosen and compared it to the sketches in his journal.

“All right, Danny-boy, time to clock out.”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“Not anymore. We’re going back to my place.”

“Jack, this is-”

“Not a request.”

The urge to fight was fading under the weight of his exhaustion. Staying angry at Jack was awkward, especially when he was being so accommodating. He wanted to be back on the planet, nestled in the darkness, trying to read ancient inscriptions by the dull flicker of torchlight. Or maybe that was Abydos.

“You can stay the night if you want,” Jack added.

“Why would I want to stay the night?”

“Daniel, just…” Jack faltered, the stress of the day highlighted by the pallor of his face. He pressed a thumb between his eyebrows and closed his eyes. “Just go pack a bag.”

Daniel wasn’t sure whose victory it was.

* * *

Summertime in Colorado Springs was the antithesis of the cartouche. Warm, bright, full of life, and open in a way that made you feel like you might fall off the surface of the earth if you weren’t careful about it. The mountains formed a strange inversion to the domed ceilings of the chambers Daniel had left behind. As they pulled onto the road, Daniel realized that it was Friday, and that the streets would be full of people heading out to spend the weekend outdoors, people who wanted to play at leaving thousands of years of civilization behind.

His duffel shifted at the turn, and Daniel kicked it further into the footwell. He’d brought enough clothes for a couple of days, even as he protested he wasn’t going to stay. He wasn’t even mad anymore, really, just entrenched. The window of opportunity for Jack to leverage what little actual authority he had was already closed, the initial report submitted without any mention of Daniel’s transgressions. Daniel was ready to go toe to toe with Jack, and Jack seemed ready, too, a determined slant to his lips before he opened them to speak.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you in the briefing.” The literal meaning of Jack’s words was tainted by the undertone of angry accusation. Daniel didn’t know what to do with it. “It was uncalled for, and it didn’t reflect how much I value your contributions to the team.”

The apology came out in a harsh staccato, more reprimand than anything else, and Daniel ignored the thin veneer of remorse laid over it. Whatever Jack was laying the groundwork for, Daniel didn’t feel the need to wait before making his own preemptive strike. “Wow, that’s a really good apology, Jack. Did you come up with it yourself, or…”

“No, I did not have a PR team craft an apology for you.” At least he looked over at Daniel for that, his eyebrows pulled down to mirror the irritation in his voice. “If you don’t want to accept it, that’s your prerogative. You have every right to feel angry.”

Daniel stretched his mouth out in the harsh semblance of a smile. He was beyond excited that he had a right to feel emotions.

“You want to make faces at me? That’s fine. If you’d yelled at me or called me names today, you could have done that, too. What’s not fine, and what you did, was violate safety protocol and willfully disobey orders on an off-world mission.” The content had fallen in line with Jack’s tone, a clear rebuke. Exactly what Daniel had been waiting for. “That is what we call a disproportionate response.”

Now that he knew where the conversation was heading, Daniel withdrew from it and took in the wilderness as it passed by. He’d heard they were going to turn the area into a park. 

“I want you back out in the field ASAP, so we’re going to take care of this tonight.”

The woods had given way to a view of Fort Carson, and Daniel watched it disappear and reappear as they followed the winding curves of the road.

“Okay?” Jack prompted him, and Daniel shrugged toward the window.

“I don’t know. It’s kind of a vague statement to agree to, Jack.”

Daniel’s stomach lurched as Jack swerved the car to the shoulder and jerked to a stop, flicking on the emergency lights with a harsh swipe of his hand before twisting in his seat to face Daniel.

“Let me be explicit. You crossed a line, and you’re getting punished for it. And when we go back to that planet, you’re going to respect the chain of command. And you’re also going to cut it out with all this passive-aggressive crap you’ve been giving me all day. Does that clear things up for you?”

When Daniel just sat there, waiting for the tirade to pass, Jack groaned and rested his head on the steering wheel. “I don’t know how to talk to you when you’re like this.”

“Have you tried not being a condescending ass?”

“Yeah, I have. Just a few minutes ago when I tried apologizing to you.”

“It didn’t sound sincere.”

“Daniel, I am sincerely sorry!” Jack’s fingers were splayed out in frustration, and Daniel basically believed him.

“Then why are you talking about punishing me? Maybe I should be punishing you.”

“You kinda have been! Or is that not what’s been going on today?”

Jack waited for an answer that Daniel didn’t have.

“You know, every time you’ve pulled some reckless stunt that almost got you killed, it’s always been for an idealistic, do-gooder reason. I never thought I’d see the day that you’d risk yourself for some stupid, high-stakes temper tantrum.”

“I didn’t.”

“Don’t insult me by pretending that’s not what happened. You decided to wander off and go radio silent. To what? Give me a heart attack? Piss me off? Well, A-plus work, Daniel. I was scared, and then I was furious. This is what success looks like.”

Every cell in Daniel’s body was aching to apologize, but he held firm. Tugging on the seatbelt, he adjusted himself in the seat and set his jaw against Jack’s judgement.

“So, yes, I’m sorry for what I said. I was rude, and I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. But you were reckless, you were insubordinate, you were childish, and you were spiteful. And you’re only getting punished for the first two.”

“So next time follow your lead and stick to childish and spiteful,” Daniel shot back, locking eyes with him.

Jack met the challenge, holding Daniel’s gaze for almost a minute, until Daniel had to fight the urge to look away. As he wavered, Jack gave him the answer he hadn’t been looking for. “Exactly.”

Jack pulled back onto the road and they resumed their journey to his house. With the destination now firmly entwined with its context, Daniel wondered what his endgame actually was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Fessst for making this better than it would have been.

The smell of Jack’s house always put Daniel in some sort of mood. He remembered it distinctly from his first night back on Earth, so different from the desert nights he’d been used to, and from the acrid smell of cooking smoke and living cheek by jowl with livestock. As he’d lain in bed, wrapped in sheets and pyjamas that smelled as if they’d never touched another person, the loneliness crept into his lungs and pores, masquerading as the scent of laundry soap. He’d crouched next to Jack’s bedroom door for two hours, listening to him breathe, just to remind himself that there were still other people. 

On subsequent nights, he had watched television. Daniel had forgotten about television. He’d forgotten what it was like to be a foreigner in your own land.

“Go ahead and take your bag back to your room.”

His room. It was the guest room, and he still hadn’t agreed to stay overnight.

He wanted to argue, but Jack was already heading toward the kitchen, leaving Daniel without a target for his intended defiance. He considered staying in the foyer, passively resisting, or even following Jack into the kitchen to argue. Part of him wanted to fight Jack on everything, hold the line. The tacit agreement of the overnight bag in his hands would have undermined anything he wanted to say.

He walked back to his bedroom and set his bag on the floor next to the bed. The book he’d been reading last time was still on the bedside table. He flipped through it, seriously considering holing up in the bedroom until Jack came for him.

After a few minutes of Jack not coming to get him, Daniel ventured back into the foyer. He froze at the sight of Jack waiting for him, leaning against the table with his belt already doubled up in his grasp.

“Come on,” Jack prompted him, pushing himself off the table and motioning Daniel forward.

Daniel’s feet didn’t budge, and he bit down on the inside of his lip. “Can’t we talk about it?”

“Okay, talk.”

Daniel opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, he heaved a few breaths before blinking away the tears that stung at his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry in front of Jack.

“Well?” Jack asked, and Daniel just shook his head. “Do you want to talk or not?”

“Yes.” 

“Then _talk_.” Jack motioned him to hurry it along, but all Daniel could see was the belt waving in his hand.

“Wait, um,” Daniel looked around the room desperately. “Can I have a beer?”

“Can you have a _beer_?!” Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, you know, how we have a beer and talk.”

“No, Daniel, you can’t have a beer. This is not a social call. We’re dealing with some serious misconduct here. You deliberately broke safety protocol just so you could rub my face in it.” As much as Daniel wanted to deny it, that was exactly what he had done. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Daniel said, but he knew it was unconvincing. He couldn’t even look Jack in the eyes.

“Danny, you were so out of line that Teal’c thought you were possessed by aliens.” 

“I was translating. That’s my job.”

Jack sighed sharply and threw the belt on the table. “Okay, talking isn’t working. Go wait in your room while I make dinner.”

“You’re sending me to my room?”

“Yes.” He’d expected a sarcastic comment. This sincere version of Jack was unsettling. “Go.”

“No. I don’t want to wait in there.”

“Okay.” Before Daniel knew it, Jack was at his side, grabbing his arm and dragging him toward the dining table where the belt lay ominously in wait.

“No, Jack, stop it!”

“This is obviously what you want,” Jack said, releasing him after just a few steps, and motioning toward the belt, just in case there was any tiny bit of ambiguity left in where things were heading.

“No, it’s not! It’s not what I want!”

“What is it then? You want to get suspended?”

“No!”

“Really? Because you deliberately broke rules that you knew were going to get you punished, and you’ve been doing everything you can to push my buttons all day.” He paused for Daniel to deny it, but it was too late for that. “So it’s either the belt, suspension, or go wait in your room until you’re ready to decide.”

“I don’t want any of them!”

“Too bad.”

Daniel tried to wait him out, but Jack’s expectant expression was carved in granite, and Daniel felt the panic buzzing through himself already. “What if I apologize?”

“That’d be great!”

“And it would count as the punishment?”

“No.”

“So you apologize, and it’s over, but I apologize, and it’s not enough.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Daniel could see that he’d pushed it too far. He started to step back, but Jack grabbed his elbow and pulled him even closer, so Daniel could see the fury play across Jack’s face for a few seconds, before it went stony again. “Yep, you nailed it. Now, what’s it gonna be?”

“Wait, Jack. Just wait. I’m apologizing. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry.” He did feel sorry, and it felt good to finally say it, even though Jack looked more exasperated by the apology than anything else.

“You’re not getting out of this. Choose, or I choose for you.”

“Okay, okay,” he agreed, trying to think through his options. It was a lot easier to choose the belt when it wasn’t already doubled over in plain sight. “If I choose the belt, can we wait until after dinner?”

“No. You’re just making it worse by drawing it out.” 

“But I-”

“If you didn’t have to argue about everything, this would be over by now!”

“If you’d just let it go, it’d be over by now.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Jack grabbed him again and dragged him the rest of the way to the table.

“No, I didn’t choose yet!”

“Yeah, you did,” Jack said flatly when they reached the table. Without letting go of Daniel, he pulled out a chair. “Take your glasses off.” 

Daniel stared at the seat of the chair, wondering what Jack was going to do. Probably make him bend over with his hands on it, like he did the first time. His fingers curled up at the memory.

“Daniel, now,” Jack said, and Daniel remembered he was supposed to be taking his glasses off. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do any of this.

“Jack…”

“Do you need me to do it for you?”

Shaking his head, Daniel grabbed his glasses and flung them onto the table. They slid halfway across before skidding to a stop. 

“Daniel, look at me.” Jack was close enough that his face wasn’t blurry, but everything else in the room was, leaving Jack the only thing he could really focus on. “Do you want to take the suspension instead?”

Daniel shrugged. “It’s too late. You already submitted your report.”

“I can amend the report.”

“Won’t you get in trouble for leaving things out the first time?”

“Probably.”

So Jack was willing to get in trouble himself just to get Daniel suspended. Or at least he said so. Daniel turned the thought over in his head. Jack wasn’t bluffing. Daniel squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them back with a sigh. “I don’t want to be suspended.”

“I know. Come on. Hands on the chair.”

His focus split between the chair and the belt, Daniel was paralyzed. “I can’t.”

“Daniel…” Jack sighed, then considered him carefully. “Okay.”

Before Daniel could ask what that meant, Jack had already propped a foot up on a crossbeam of the chair and tipped Daniel over his thigh.

“No, Jack, wait!” He tried to get back up, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He just went where Jack put him while his mouth worked overtime to resist. “Wait, Jack, I’m not going to do it again.”

“Give me your hand,” Jack ordered, pulling on his elbow, but Daniel tucked his arm underneath his stomach. Apparently his body _was_ willing to resist when it involved curling into a protective ball. “Give me your hand, Daniel.”

The second command was reinforced with a slap to the back of his thigh. Gasping in shock, Daniel barely had time to process that his arm was already being twisted behind him.

“Wait, Jack, I’m sorry!” 

Ignoring him, Jack picked the belt up from the table. It rested on the small of Daniel’s back for a few moments while Daniel sank into helplessness. He whimpered another soft apology before Jack tightened his grip, bracing both of them against what was to come.

“Okay, here we go,” Jack warned him, and the belt came down several times in quick succession. 

Daniel jerked at the contact, but Jack’s arm across his back kept him from going anywhere. He didn’t bother trying to stay still, writhing in Jack’s grasp and kicking futilely at the floor, more to distract himself from what was happening than anything else. Jack just held tighter, until Daniel lifted his feet up to protect himself.

“Put your feet down,” Jack said, pausing to push them away, but Daniel immediately brought them back up again. “Daniel, if you break this chair squirming around…” The threat trailed off as Jack stopped trying to force Daniel’s legs back down and instead hauled him completely upright. Daniel scrambled to get his feet back under him, grabbing onto the chair as Jack spun him back around to demand, “What are you _doing_?” 

Without any sort of explanation, Daniel stood silently waiting for Jack’s condemnation. 

“Did you change your mind? You want a different punishment?” 

Daniel didn’t want any punishment, but he knew Jack wouldn’t accept that as an answer. Maybe Jack had been right before, that Daniel just wanted to make things as difficult as possible for Jack to follow through on punishing him at all. He tried to think of something that would make any sense. “Just not the belt. It can be a physical punishment, just not the belt.”

“And if I get something else, you’re not going to fight me?” At the small shake of Daniel’s head, Jack set the belt down, then stuck a finger inches from Daniel’s face. “Wait here. Do not move from this spot.”

It didn’t take long for Jack to return, with blurry… something in hand. When Jack got close, the oblong blur resolved itself into a large wooden spoon, and Daniel knew he’d made a mistake. He didn’t want Jack to use it on him any more than the belt. “Jack, I’m-”

The sharp expression on Jack’s face cut him off, and Daniel wondered how far his promise not to fight Jack was supposed to go. Jack didn’t bother telling him to get into position, and instead grabbed Daniel and moved him exactly where Jack wanted him, with Daniel too unnerved by the spoon to put up even a token protest.

“Don’t kick your feet up,” Jack said, just before the spoon bit into the seat of Daniel’s slacks. 

It stung worse than the belt, or at least was different, but Daniel didn’t have time to analyze it. The spoon came down more rapidly than the belt ever could and Daniel was twisting around, trying to avoid the onslaught. “I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it again, Jack, I’m sorry!”

After a couple of seconds, the spoon clattered on the table, and Jack helped Daniel back to his feet. “I said I’m sorry.” His voice came out shaky and soft, and he thought he might be pouting.

“It’s okay, we’re done.” Jack ran his hands up and down Daniel’s arms, then stepped all the way in and pulled him close.

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” Daniel protested into Jack’s shoulder, but Jack only chuckled softly and rubbed from the base of his neck down to between his shoulder blades.

“Daniel, I kinda suck at relationships.”

“No kidding.”

“Hey, careful there,” Jack said, but the remonstration came out soft and affectionate. He pulled away to look at Daniel’s face. “Let’s go down to the couch.”

They took the few steps down to the living room, and Jack tugged Daniel down to sit at his side.

“All right, Spacemonkey, what’s up?” It was a nickname that only came out when Jack was feeling at his most protective. Daniel didn’t know what to say, even when Jack leaned in to bump his shoulder softly. “Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? Bigger than a breadbox?”

“Jack…”

“Danny, this isn’t a punishment, but I can’t let you go off world until I know that you’re okay. Talk to me.”

Maybe Jack _did_ deserve an explanation, even if it wouldn’t make any sense to him. Daniel stared at his hands and mumbled, “I have to bring food for Sha’re.”

“What?”

Daniel shook his head. Jack would never understand. “It’s the Abydonian version of the Wadi festival, like Qingming or Día de Muertos. You bring food to your dead relatives so they can eat in the afterlife.” He paused, waiting for Jack to tell him how stupid it was. When no ridicule came, he continued. “After the Triad, when I told Skaara about Sha’re, I said I’d come back for it this year. Then with the time loop, we got out of sync with Abydos. I didn’t realize until yesterday.”

Jack stared out the window as he took it all in, then turned back to Daniel with an exasperated expression. “Well, jeez, Daniel, why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”

“I don’t know.” Daniel shrugged. “I guess I thought you’d think it was stupid.”

“It sounds like a major family commitment. Why would I think it was stupid?”

“Because I’m bringing food for my dead wife to eat in the afterlife.” He picked at his fingernails to avoid catching Jack’s eyes.. “You haven’t exactly been open minded about foreign cultural practices.”

“So you decided to have me to beat it out of you instead?”

“No,” he protested, but he thought it might be exactly what he had done. It hadn’t taken a genius to realize where the day was heading once he went AWOL on mission. He told himself he was just mad, but he’d been pushing Jack all day.

“You know what I should have done. I should have taken you over my knee when you kept giving me attitude yesterday, nipped it in the bud. Then we wouldn’t have had to go through all this today.”

“You’re not funny, Jack.” Daniel punched Jack lightly in his arm.

“Ow.” Jack rubbed at the spot, laughing. “Was that for my poor comedic skills?”

“For being a jerk at the briefing.”

“Okay, I guess I deserved it.”

“Yeah, you were rude,” Daniel agreed sharply, but most of the anger had already left him. He was tired, hungry, and more than ready for reconciliation, even if the spectre of letting his family down still lingered.

Jack was ready, too, if the fond smile on his face was any indication. “We need to work on the fight training, though. That was weak.”

“You want me to hit you harder?” Daniel asked, suspiciously. It sounded like a trap.

“Whoa, don’t beat me up yet, Mohammed Ali. I still have to make you dinner.”

* * *

Daniel had a short reprieve while Jack cooked, but he was forced into domestic labor after they finished eating, just as he’d expected.

“So your dishwasher’s just decorative?”

Jack didn’t give him the satisfaction of rising to the bait, just continued wiping a pot dry. “Didn’t you have to hand wash everything on Abydos?”

“Well, yeah, but, I mean, not me, in particular...”

Jack laughed. “Sha’re did it, didn’t she?”

“I tried to help her! She got upset. It was a cultural thing. It shamed her.” Daniel scrubbed the sauce pan harder, annoyed at how ridiculous he sounded.

“No, no, I’m sure you did other things,” Jack assured him, mouth quirked in reaction to Daniel’s obvious discomfort at the extent to which he’d done next to no household tasks when he’d been married. “Cleaned the tent gutters. Mowed the sand. You know, men’s work.”

Daniel laughed before he could help it, strangely giddy over what wasn’t even that funny of a joke. Then, frantic humor twisted into a wave of grief that overtook him. He clutched at the end of the sink to ride it out, clenching his teeth against the wracking sobs. Eyes closed, Daniel had no warning before Jack’s arms were around him, a hand on the back of his head, pulling him away from the sink and into Jack’s shoulder. He tried to get himself under control, but it was an uphill battle. His voice came out cracked and watery. “Sorry.”

Jack made soothing noise as he squeezed Daniel into his chest. “Listen, I wasn’t going to tell you this, because I can’t make any promises, but I’m going to call General Hammond first thing tomorrow morning and see whether we can get you to Abydos on Sunday.”

For several moments, Jack’s words lay unparsed in Daniel’s mind, but as he pulled himself together, the implications fell into place. “Wait, really?”

“Yes, but I’m coming with you, and next time, you _talk to me_. You don’t act out and put yourself at risk.”

“Yeah, okay.” If he was going to Abydos on Sunday, nothing else mattered. He began to compile an internal list of the things he’d need to prepare. The standard gear, as well as food for the festival and gifts for his friends and family. He wondered what he should wear. He’d left his robes on Abydos in the chaos of Sha’re’s recapture.

“This is not a ‘yeah, okay’ kind of situation, Danny. I’m not going to let it go this far again.”

“Yeah, o-” He stopped as he realized what Jack had said. “What… what exactly do you mean?”

“I mean, if you start giving me the same kind of attitude you were giving me yesterday, I’m going to put a stop to it before it turns into reckless disobedience. You got it?”

The threat hung in the air, but Daniel would accept anything if it meant keeping his promise to Skaara. He nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”

Jack returned his nod, satisfied with Daniel’s less than thoughtful response. “So, am I supposed to bring something? Some sort of ghost meal?”

“Yeah, traditionally you’d bring her favorites, but she never really had Earth food.” He tried to remember what he’d described to her, what he’d wanted her to experience. French fries, hummus, grilled cheese, Oreos. The list went on, and he’d need to bring fresh fruit and some more traditional foods, flatbreads, nuts, things that would keep. “Whatever you like is fine, as long as it won’t spoil in the heat. Whatever’s left after the sun goes down is kind of up for grabs.”

“Oh, are ghosts usually not very hungry? Leave a lot of leftovers?”

“Jack.” Daniel rolled his eyes on principle, but he was too buoyed by the thought of being back on Abydos to get too worked up by Jack’s casual mockery, especially when Jack was the one who was going to get him there.

Jack grinned at Daniel’s response. “Doritos and Guinness it is.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the wonderful [ Fessst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fessst), for the encouragement and the eagle eyed beta.

The trip from Earth to Abydos was too quick, with Daniel thrown into a past that no longer belonged to him the moment he left Stargate Command. Jack emerged beside him, imminently comfortable with being an anomaly in what should have been Daniel’s element.

“Daniel!” Skaara ran to the gate platform and threw his arms around Daniel, then faced Jack with a grin. “O’Neill!”

“Skaara,” Jack nodded back at him. “You look... not possessed by an evil snake.”

“I am well, O’Neill,” he confirmed.

“My son.” Kasuf came forward with all the reserved enthusiasm that Daniel had expected. “It is good for you to come. Both of you.”

“What have you brought?” Skaara asked, eying the supplies that even Daniel in his excitement could admit were overkill. He’d brought enough to feed half the village, having barely slept the night before as he mentally prepared his list, then spent the entire day shopping and deciding while Jack did all the paperwork for their journey.

Kasuf laid a light hand on his son’s arm. “Skaara, that is for your sister.”

“Here, this one’s for you. Have at it.” Jack fished in his pockets and pulled out a Snickers bar, but Skaara just shook his head.

“Thank you, O’Neill, but the sun has risen.”

“For later,” Jask said, holding it out.

Jack’s gaffe irritated Daniel in a way that it shouldn’t. “He can’t take it now. Not until sundown.”

Jack put the candy bar back in his pocket, and the four of them stepped out into the quickly brightening desert, a shock after leaving early evening in Colorado. The mastages were tied outside, already loaded with most of what the family would need, and Daniel rubbed one of their noses before they took off toward the gravesite, with the sun rising behind them.

It took almost two hours to get there, and Daniel was already hot and tired. He worked with Kasuf and Skaara to set up the tent, brushing off Jack’s attempts to participate. After several offers, Jack retreated to his pack and started to pull out the food.

“Don’t eat anything, Jack!”

“I know, Daniel.”

Daniel tried to ignore him, but kept an eye out for any other broken taboos as he lost himself in the unending array of manual labor that Abydos had to offer.

After another hour or so, they were done, and the sun was high in the sky. Jack had managed to help with the food while Daniel walked him through what he needed to know to make it through the day without any serious missteps, even if Jack didn’t seem too concerned about maintaining the integrity of the ceremony. Daniel huffed as Jack checked the time on his watch against the position of the sun.

“Jack, this is important.”

“Yes, I got it. Don’t eat anything until sundown, and don’t mix the kisa seeds with alcohol if I don’t want to go wacko.” That hadn’t been what Daniel had said at all, and he was gearing up to repeat his lecture when Jack cut him off. “Danny, this isn't my first time off world.”

“Yeah, and you kind of have a track record for being disrespectful to the local culture.”

“Daniel…” Jack’s frustration bubbled to the surface, and Daniel saw several choice sentences play across his face before he got it under control. “Knock it off.”

Daniel opened his mouth to respond, but noticed Kasuf silently observing the interaction. It was time to head out anyway, and Daniel only ground his teeth as he caught the wry smile that Jack had intended for Kasuf alone.

They crossed over to Sha’re’s grave and set out the offerings. In previous years, they’d set up next to Sha’re’s mother’s grave, and visited her first, followed by other extended members of their family. Not having known them, Daniel hadn’t been expected to speak, other than short platitudes at the end. This time, things would be different.

Kasuf spoke first, the prescribed Abydonian prayers, then more of his own choosing. It didn’t take long, not with Daniel there to do the bulk of the talking. Abydonian words fell easily form Daniel’s lips, and he remembered when the sounds had strung togethering meaningfully for the first time, in the caves with Sha’re, when she’d delighted in his progress with their language, slow and stuttering as it had seemed to him. He kept with Abydonian, even when he switched over into his personal messages for her. 

After Daniel finished, Skaara began to speak, but Daniel wasn’t in a state to hear what he said. When Skaara fell silent, they turned to Jack, who only offered up a helpless shrug. Kasuf said the final prayer and they started the walk to Sha’re’s mother’s grave, Daniel carefully keeping Jack from his field of view.

They had only taken a few steps before Kasuf stopped the group. “You are tired, my son. You and O’Neill should rest at the tent.”

Daniel knew that Kasuf was only trying to spare Jack the tedium of cycling through a ritual he didn’t care to understand for the rest of the afternoon, but Daniel bristled at being lumped together as outsiders. “I’m not that tired.”

“He’s right, Danny. It’s two in the morning back home, and you barely got any sleep last night.”

“I can go with you, Father,” Daniel insisted, ignoring Jack’s comment and switching into Abydonian for the conversation with Kasuf.

Frowning softly, Kasuf put a comforting hand on the side of Daniel’s face. “Stay with your wife, Daniel.”

Kasuf had long ago figured out how to phrase ‘advice’ such that Daniel had no choice but to follow it. He nodded and turned back to the tent, making every effort to ignore Jack’s presence beside him, until Jack pulled out a canteen and started to take a swig.

“Stop it, Jack. It’s disrespectful,” he snapped.

“It’s water.”

“You’re not supposed to eat or drink anything until after the sun goes down. You’ll make the ghosts angry.”

“Okay.” Jack tightened the cap on his bottle. “Kasuf is right. We should get some rest.”

Daniel balked at being put down for a nap like a cranky child, but the truth was that sleep was pulling at him. Without the distraction of maintaining traditions, his head began to pound under the twin pressures of thirst and exhaustion. He tried to settle in, stuffing his outer shift under his head as he lay on one of the rugs they’d laid out in the morning. Just as his mind began to float, he was startled by the sound of the cap twisting off a water bottle.

“Jack!”

“I’m not drinking it, Daniel. I’m just using it to cool off. It’s a million degrees here.” Jack’s face mirrored the annoyance and indignation in his voice.

“Then go back.”

“Excuse me?” Jack demanded, water forgotten beside him.

“I said if you’re so miserable here, and you don’t respect the cultural traditions, then go back.”

Jack stood and motioned Daniel to join him. “All right, get up.”

“Why? I thought you wanted me to sleep.”

“And now I want you to stand up and tell me what this attitude is about.”

Daniel wasn’t about to stand up just so that Jack could dress him down like some military recruit. “I already told you. I don’t want you breaking cultural taboos at my wife’s grave.”

“On your feet, Daniel. You’ve got five seconds.”

“I’m not-”

“Three seconds.”

Seething, Daniel dragged himself to his feet. He was hot, thirsty, starving, and uninterested in any of Jack’s complaints.

“Look at me,” Jack demanded, then waited until Daniel glowered at him. “This is a situation where an apology actually would fix things.”

“Okay.”

“I’m waiting.”

If Daniel knew Jack, he’d wait for long enough that they’d have an audience when Kasuf and Skaara return. He considered his options. “I’m sorry I explained Abydonian cultural norms to you.”

“Try again.”

“That’s what I did! And I _am_ sorry, because you’re not taking them seriously because everything is a joke to you.”

Jack’s jaw dropped, as if he’d never met himself before, or selective amnesia had erased every snarky comment he’d ever made about everyone and everything around them. “You think this is a _joke_ to me? I got special permission to bring you here, stayed awake for twenty-two hours, sat in the middle of the desert burning to death with nothing to eat or drink all day, all for you, and in return, you’ve been giving me obnoxious attitude about everything. An attitude that I warned you about yesterday.”

The truth twisted inside him. Jack _had_ done all of those things, but Daniel was irked by his cavalier attitude toward Abydonian custom, and even more so that Kasuf had lumped the two of them together. He should have been there with Kasuf and Skaara, leaving Jack to suffer on his own. Or sneak water and food when no one was looking. Jack’s presence had relegated Daniel to outsider status.

“Nothing to say?”

He shrugged. Nothing that Jack wanted to hear.

“Okay, just get some sleep. Maybe when we wake up, it’ll be time to eat.”

“Oh, so you want me to sleep?” Daniel lifted his eyebrows in a parody of astonishment. “Because just a couple minutes ago, when I was trying to sleep, you said you wanted me to get up.”

“Daniel, cut it out.” Jack jabbed a finger toward Daniel’s face. “I don’t have the patience for this right now.”

“Patience for what? You want me to lie down, you want me to stand up, you want me to lie down again…”

Jack’s face went hard, a sure sign that Daniel had successfully pushed all of his buttons. “I’m done with this. It’s your last warning about the attitude.”

“What _attitude_? All I said was-”

The protest cut off in a gasp as Jack pulled Daniel roughly to him and smacked the back of Daniel’s thigh. Daniel tried to pull away, but the grip on his elbow was too tight. It didn't matter that much, anyway, because Jack had already spun him back around and was holding a finger to his face.

"You just got off easy."

The list of things he could do flashed through his mind: wrench his arm from Jack's hand, protest the treatment, slap him back, or worse. 

“Are we clear now, on what I mean by the attitude?” Jack demanded, and all Daniel could do was nod, compressed under the weight of Jack's reproof. As he tried to keep his face from completely crumpling, the grip on his arm loosened and became a slight tug that ushered him into Jack's arms. "Come here."

He didn't exactly have a choice, with Jack's arms around him, but he didn't push away either, a reluctant recipient of the comfort.

"You should apologize," he groused into Jack's shoulder.

The hug began to vibrate as Jack chuckled softly. " _You_ should apologize. You earned that swat, and more."

"I'm not apologizing to you. That hurt." And it did, sort of, a tingling reminder of Jack's acute but short-lived displeasure with him.

Jack let out a non-committal hum before pulling back and handing him a wet bandana, made cool by the dry desert air. “Here, wipe your face with this.”

It felt good, Daniel had to admit. He was still hungry and thirsty and hot and tired, but his anger at Jack had bled away with the hug, and all that was left was his grief. He was allowed to sit down, with Jack beside him, idly bumping up against him with his shoulder.

“What’s going on, Spacemonkey?”

“Nothing.”

“If you want to tell me that you’ve been torturing me all day for ‘nothing’, you’re about to get a lot more than one half-hearted swat, Daniel.”

“Jack…” Daniel huffed, but started to put his thoughts together. “I thought it’d be different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. I thought I’d fit back in here, that it’d be like coming home, but it’s not the same.” Part of it was Sha’re, how much more sharply he felt her loss when he was on Abydos, but a lot of it admittedly wasn’t. “I don’t belong here anymore.”

“They say you can’t go home again.”

“Yeah, except I don’t belong on Earth anymore, either.”

Jack nodded. “Well, yeah, it’s weird to do what we do and then go back and throw steaks on the grill with your neighbors.”

“No, I don’t fit in at SGC.”

“What?” Jack actually looked astonished, a rare change from the irritated amusement that met most of Daniel’s complaints. “Daniel, you’re on the flagship team.”

“Yeah, a military team, and I’m the only one who’s not military.”

“Huh? We have an actual _alien_ on our team, and you think that you’re the outsider?” Jack shook his head. “And Sam’s the only woman on the team. And I’m, well… I’m obviously the most rakishly handsome, witty, charming…”

“Jack,” Daniel groaned.

“Daniel,” Jack teased back.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t the only outsider on the team, but he was the only one without anywhere else to go. Teal’c had Chulak, and Sam had her family. Jack had… What did Jack have?

“You ready to get some shut-eye?” Jack asked, and Daniel nodded and sank back to the rug. Jack followed and squeezed his shoulder tight. “Sleep well, Danny-boy.”

Daniel was just drifting off when the thought occurred to him that maybe what Jack had was Daniel.

* * *

The sun was almost gone when he woke, the last rays reflecting off Jack’s face as he stared into the sunset.

“You don’t have to check it, Jack. They’ll sound the horn when the sun is down,” he said as he put his glasses back on.

“O’Neill is very hungry,” laughed Skaara.

Daniel sat up to find Kasuf and Skaara back in the tent, preparing for the evening meal. “You slept well, my son,” Kasuf told him.

“Yeah, you could have woken me up.”

“You needed to rest,” Kasuf answered.

He got up to help them, puttering around the tent until the horn blew and he was free to go collect the food that Sha’re had ‘left’ for them. Skaara had tried to join, but Kasuf redirected him to the other graves, leaving Daniel alone as he collected the various items and tried not to fall into the trap of thinking that Sha’re was watching him.

“So that’s it,” he said to no one in particular as he placed the last piece of fruit in his basket. He looked around, almost hoping there was something that he’d missed, a reason to take a little more time before he headed back to the tent, but he’d already packed everything away. “Thanks for making me feel like I was normal, or at least like there isn’t anything wrong with me.”

He shut his mouth and his mind and his heart and turned back the way he’d come. He’d made it halfway back to the tent when Jack was in front of him. Daniel stopped in his tracks, with nothing to say.

“Come here,” Jack said, and didn’t give Daniel a chance to obey, just grabbed him up and squeezed tight. Daniel didn’t know what to do with the unexpected affection.

“What?”

“Preemptive strike on your recent attitude problem,” Jack explained gruffy, in stark contrast to the way he was rubbing a hand across Daniel’s upper back.

Daniel felt like he should have some sort of rejoinder, but he didn’t. The air had cooled quickly, and he didn’t mind the heat of Jack’s body against him. There was a lump in the back of his throat that was threatening to turn into a sob, and he swallowed down hard on it. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Yeah, me, too, Danny.” Jack stepped back just enough that they could look each other in the eyes. “You okay?”

Daniel nodded, his face held tight against everything that was wrong inside of him.

“Are you lying to me?”

He nodded again, and Jack took him in and held close, this time not letting go for questions they already knew the answer to. They stayed like that for a while, both pretending that Daniel wasn’t falling apart in Jack’s arms.

* * *

“Daniel spoke of French fries many times,” Skaara said, mouth and hands full of food that had been myth and legend just a day before. “They are nothing as he described.”

“Well, they’re better fresh, buddy,” Jack explained.

“No, the taste is beyond anything I have imagined. These are common on your world?”

“Yep. We’ve got places that fry them up by the truckload.”

Skaara’s grin widened. “And how big is a ‘truckload’, O’Neill?”

Daniel let his mind stray from the conversation, until he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. “Walk with me, good son.”

Kasuf waited for Daniel to stand, and they walked into the dark night together. The stars filled the darkness in the way they never could in the light-polluted sky of Colorado. As Daniel kept pace with Kasuf, he began to feel awkward in his BDU’s, and wished he’d found some way to get his Abydonian robes back before he’d come. Kasuf didn’t seem to mind, staring off into the distance and pondering whatever it was that that went through his head at times like these, probably preparing a series of incisive questions for Daniel.

“It was good of O’Neill to come with you,” Kasuf finally spoke. “He cares for you very much.”

“Yeah, he does,” Daniel agreed. When Kasuf didn’t respond, he realized that he was expected to elaborate, explain exactly what had been going on between them. And Kasuf knew Daniel would have no choice but to fill the silence. “He was worried about me.”

“You’ve been unwell?”

“Not exactly. Maybe. I was, um, disrespectful, I guess,” Daniel squinted down at his boots as they sank into the soft sand of the desert. The irony of the admission was not lost on either of them. “Disobedient. Defiant.” 

“I thought this was the way of your people.” The subtle lilt in his voice and slight quirk of his lips were the only indication of the humor hidden in the comment.

“Yeah, he didn’t like it,” Daniel laughed.

“Ah.” Kasuf took a few steps in silence. “And did you like it, my son? Defying him?”

“No, I guess not.” 

“You defied the gods for us, Daniel.”

“Yeah.”

“And now we are free.”

“Yeah.”

“And who becomes free when you defy O’Neill?”

Certainly not Daniel. Backed into a corner, he fell to the same excuses with Kasuf years before. “Our world is different, good father.”

“My son, you are not different.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

* * *

They’d been up all night by the time they got back to SGC, with the short nap barely making a dent in their fatigue. It would have made sense to stay on base for a while, but Jack wanted to drive them home.

“You wanna stay over one more night?”

Daniel really did, but he felt awkward and needy, especially after his multiple breakdowns in the past couple days. “I don’t want to put you out.”

“Not what I asked.”

“I know you’re tired, so you-”

“Let me rephrase,” Jack cut him off. “You’ll be staying at my place tonight.”

“Yeah, okay.” Daniel tugged a bit on the shoulder strap of his seatbelt and tried to rest his head against the window. He must have succeeded because the next thing he knew, Jack was shaking his shoulder, and they were in the driveway of his house. Daniel stumbled to the door after Jack.

“Are you hungry?” Jack asked, once they were inside.

Daniel shook his head. “Just tired. But I don’t want to sleep until at least eight.”

“Too late for that,” Jack teased him. “Beer?”

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed, even though he knew it would just put him to sleep.

While Jack got their beers, Daniel settled on the couch. He had almost nodded off again when Jack shoved a bottle in his hand. “Sure you don’t want to nap?”

“Yeah.” He scooted over to make more room for Jack, who sat down beside him, and took a few sips. The effect of the alcohol must have been psychosomatic, because he was already feeling talkative. “So, Kasuf had opinions on our relationship.”

“Our _relationship_?” Jack asked skeptically. “Daniel, I know you two were close, but their lives are totally different there.”

“He thinks I’d be happier if I didn’t defy you so much.”

“On the other hand, he’s a pretty smart guy.”

Daniel snorted around the mouth of the bottle. “So you think he’s right.”

“Daniel, I don’t know how to say this nicely, but you need somebody to rein you in.”

“I’m a maverick.” Daniel held up his bottle in a toast to his iconoclasm.

“No, you’re a disobedient little snot.”

Daniel laughed. “Yeah.”

Jack sized him up. “What do you think?”

“I think…” His sleep deprived and alcohol addled brain was having trouble thinking anything at all. “Wait, what was the question?”

“Do you think you need somebody to rein you in?”

“Oh, yeah,” he thought about it, his brain not just moving slowly, but tripping over itself in ways that he normally wouldn’t allow it to do. “Yeah, probably, but not just anybody. You do a pretty good job of it.”

“Okay.” A smile was playing at Jack’s lips, and Daniel thought that he might be acting drunk. His beer was empty, and his head was swimming, and Jack was starting to talk again. “So you’re not mad at me for disciplining you?”

“What? No!” Daniel stretched out his hand to reassure Jack. It wavered, but landed on the side of Jack’s face, strangely detached from any intention on Daniel’s part. Had he eaten kisa seed on Abydos? The thought came and went and was replaced by Jack’s concern. “I could never be mad at you, Jack. Except when I’m angry.”

“Okay, I think it’s nap time,” Jack told him, and Daniel shook his head, which somehow shook the entire room around him. He must have eaten kisa seed. He could feel it tangling with the alcohol and wrapping his mind into knots. Or straightening it out. He couldn’t tell, and Jack’s face was swimming in front of him. “Do you really want to argue with me, Danny?”

Daniel thought about it, as much thinking as he could do in his current state. “No, I want you to be nice to me.”

“I am very nicely telling you that you need to lie down and get some rest.”

Jack took the bottle from Daniel’s hand and physically tilted him down to rest his head on one of the cushions, then lifted his legs up to join the rest of his body on the couch. A few seconds later, he had a blanket in hand and was pulling it over Daniel’s chest.

“Jack, are you tucking me in?”

“No.”

Daniel smiled and reached out a hand to snag Jack’s pocket. “I have to tell you something, Jack.”

“Hm?” Jack stopped, drawn short by the hand at his hip and Daniel’s undisguised insistence.

“You take good care of me.”

Jack peered down at him, and this was Daniel’s favorite Jack, affectionate and sincere, even soft in his own strange way. “Yeah, you betcha I do.”


End file.
